New Pictures of Mars Landscape Similar to Negev

Mars or the Negev? NASA releases new pictures of “Mt. Sharp, Mars,” which show rugged hills and canyons amazingly similar to the Negev.<br/>

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Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu, 28/08/12 15:49

Mars' Mt Sharp - similar to the Negev?

Reuters/NASA

Mars or the Negev? NASA has released new pictures of “Mt. Sharp, Mars,” which show rugged hills and canyons amazingly similar to the Central Negev, which one theory proposes is the location where the Ten Commandments were handed to Moses.

NASA also released this week high-resolution frames taken by the Mars Descent Imager between the jettisoning of Curiosity‘s heat shield and touchdown in Mars’ Gale Crater earlier this month.

Many Americans have compared the landscape of Mt. Sharp with the Grand Canyon, but the light brown landscapes, sudden cliffs, craters and sand dunes are equally similar, if not more so, to southern Israel. One outstanding difference is that the Martian mountain is approximately three miles high – five times higher than the highest peaks in the Central Negev.

Mars has been discovered to have “disconformity,” meaning layers of sediment that do not at first glance fit with the layers above or below. Geologists in recent decades have solved several similar mysteries in the Negev, which experts say underwent a series of violent changes, including volcanic activity.

Whether or not there was ever life on Mars, the rover on Monday transmitted the first-ever voice recording from the planet, after NASA administrator Charles Bolden sent it a message to be beamed back, stating, ”The knowledge we hope to gain from our observation and analysis of Gale Crater will tell us much about the possibility of life on Mars as well as the past and future possibilities for our own planet."